In several interviews, Kalki Koechlin has talked about Woody Allen’s influence on her directorial debut, “The Living Room”, a play she also wrote. While the mark of Allen’s nervous energy and black humour is certainly obvious, “TLR” also carries Koechlin’s own voice, a kind of light, playful note that segues into something deeper. What emerges then is something which is its own example, quite one of a kind, and eminently entertaining. The play was staged recently as part of the ongoing Old World Theatre festival in New Delhi.
If you scratch only the surface, “The Living Room is about Death”, with the capital D that marks personification, and takes shape on the stage in the form of Neil Bhoopalam, complete with deathly blue skin, a fierce, newly discovered appetite for tea and ginger cookies, and a pretty wacky sense of fashion. Death has come to take Ana Nil with him, because his precious red book tells him that it’s her time to go. He doesn’t really control who lives and who dies. He leaves the decisions to his instincts, his notebook and the thundery rumbles of God. He sits in Ana’s living room, unknowingly occupying her late husband’s favourite chair. When Ana, played by Sheeba Chadha, does wake up, she initially assumes that she is part of a reality show. She looks up at the ceiling for hidden cameras, addresses the very spots that Death has been looking towards too. In his case, he’s addressing God.
For a while, Ana and Death are the only two characters on the stage. As they talk and move around each other, the action is so rich, so well timed, that the space seems quite full of people. Both Chaddha and Bhoopalam’s deliveries are near perfect, and their dialogues sit right, so that the conversation is natural, seamless – quite like it would be if you were to really wake up in your living room to Death in a Dress.
As Ana journeys back and forth between the present and past, as her friend Jo (Tariq Vasudeva), and her godson, Born Kuber (Jim Sarbh), appear, other threads emerge. We learn of Ana’s unhappy marriage, her life-long love for Jo, who is now married himself. We see Born display a deep, endearing fondness for a godmother he doesn’t really understand. Sarbh plays the role beautifully, the character so smoothly essayed that it seems quite hardly a fictitious one.
At one level, the most obvious one, Koechlin has written about Death. It isn’t a philosophical play, or a serious, instructive one. Instead, there’s a kind of dark, farcical way in which “TLR” approaches the inevitability and certainty of death. There is panic and frantic bargains, pleas for a little more time, as both Ana and her godson, whose life she trades for hers in a moment of sheer weakness, try to escape their fate. Doctor Zeus, called because Born, before being made privy to Death’s real identity, thinks that her aunt’s guest is “deathly” ill, adds to the confusion, and the intensity and pitch builds till it reaches a kind of heady peak.
It is this heady mix, of fear and wit and energy, that elevates the play to something more, something that is, quite like its name suggests, also about life. Ana’s living room becomes, by the sheer presence of Death, the Living room. It’s filled with life, and the desperate need to live. Koechlin doesn’t spell out lessons to be learned. Instead, she shows us Ana’s regrets, Born’s fierce need to do more, learn more, live more; she cloaks all the lessons in humour that’s dark, in surreal moments that thrill.
With this script Koechlin achieves a rare feat – a dark, pulsating, real comedy, the kind that might make you cry. The stamp of her directorial talent shows as you watch the actors carry their roles with a pleasing ease. Born’s character, should it have slipped a little, would have become gratingly slapstick. Instead, he remains altogether too real, a cocktail of ludicrous and intelligent and sensitive. Both Chaddha and Bhoopalam have a beautiful chemistry, feeding off each other’s energy as they banter. Vasudeva’s Jo is infused with just enough gravitas and stolid dependability to speak of lost loves and loyal friends. Vasudeva also plays Doctor Zeus, and it is here that perhaps the play falters a little. There is a kind of woodenness, an exaggerated quality to Zeus’ delivery and body language. It especially stands out like a sore thumb because of the company it stands in.
Despite this one faulty note, the play is definitely a successful debut, its layers appealing in more ways than one.
